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From research out of the University of Colorado Denver:
Ride-hailing accounts for an 83 percent increase in the miles cars travel for ride-hailing passengers in Denver's metro area, according to a study published this week in the journal Transportation by researchers at the University of Colorado Denver.
[...] For this first-of-its-kind study, the researcher-driver collected real-time data and surveyed passengers for feedback and demographic information. By surveying passengers, Henao learned that a combined 34 percent of his ride-hailing passengers would have taken transit, walked, or bicycled if ride-hailing hadn't existed.
Journal Reference:
Alejandro Henao, Wesley E. Marshall. The impact of ride-hailing on vehicle miles traveled. Transportation, 2018; DOI: 10.1007/s11116-018-9923-2
So, is ride hailing a net good, or not?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 28 2018, @06:52PM
... The other 66 percent would have driven, or not traveled. I think if they weren't able to travel, that's by definition not good. So let's assume most of them would have driven instead.
How many vehicle-miles would have been traveled looking for parking at the destination? If you go from suburb to suburb, you probably would already be using a car. Denver's public transportation system is not optimized for suburban travel, only for getting people in and out of downtown (source: I live there). But if you started or finished a car trip downtown, where public transit would have been a realistic option, you had to find parking. About half the vehicles driving around a typical downtown area are looking for parking, which ridesharing vehicles never do (at least not downtown!). So by taking the ride-sharing option away, you would actually increase, not decrease, congestion, even when you factor in the number that would have taken public transit or walked (bicycles also contribute to traffic congestion).
Not all miles are created equal. Cars downtown get the worst fuel mileage (all driving downtown is stop & go), pollute in the most polluted area, and contribute more to traffic congestion. If you drove 20 miles to get downtown, the last two miles while you were there contributed as much to actual car-related societal problems as the first 18. Getting the car back out of downtown again, where it can get out of the way (and hopefully, pick up a passenger going out of the downtown area at the same time) is a good thing.